Republicans are preparing to cut taxes, cut spending and curb immigration in a broad agenda that will require unifying the unruly party behind dozens of complex policy choices.
But for now, they are struggling with more mundane decisions: whether to pack their policy goals into one bill or split it into two.
It's a seemingly technical question that reveals fundamental disagreements within the Republican Party over whether to prioritize broader immigration crackdowns or tax cuts, leading to what could be months of intraparty policy debate. It's an omen.
Some Republicans say the two bills should be passed to quickly pass legislation focused on immigration at the southern border, a key campaign promise for Trump and his party's candidates. claims. But Republicans, passionate about tax cuts, pushed for a huge bill to keep the cuts from leaving the chamber.
President-elect Donald J. Trump is scheduled to meet with Republican senators in Washington on Wednesday, with lawmakers hoping for clarity on his preferred strategy. He is torn between two ideas and the argument lingers.
“I like one big, beautiful bill. I always have and always will, but two is more reliable because it allows us to get immigration done faster,” Trump said at a news conference Tuesday. , it will go a little faster.”
Republicans plan to use a process called reconciliation, which bypasses the filibuster and allows legislation to pass with a simple majority, to force a partisan fiscal package through the Senate over Democratic opposition. But for most of this year, Republicans will be working toward a one-seat majority in the House and a three-seat majority in the Senate, meaning they will need near unanimity to pass major legislation. It will be.
This has led some to worry that it will be much harder to pass one bill, let alone two.
“There are serious risks in having to pass multiple bills to get our agenda passed,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana. “When you know that there are a lot of people who want this first package, if you put only certain things in the first package, they will vote against the second package, and the second The whole package could be lost. That would be catastrophic.”
In addition to the urgency of achieving policy goals, Republicans face political disaster if they fail to achieve their policy goals. Many of the tax cuts introduced by Trump in 2017, when he was last president, expire at the end of the year. That means most Americans' taxes could go up if Congress doesn't pass a tax bill this year.
However, passing tax cuts could take time. Much of the Republican tax agenda concerns a continuation of policies the party passed in 2017, but Mr. Trump and other Republicans are pushing for things like tax exemptions on chips and new incentives for companies to manufacture in the United States. We are presenting an additional proposal. Such ideas can take months to develop into viable policy.
Secondly, it costs a lot of money. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that extending the 2017 tax cuts alone would cost more than $4 trillion over 10 years, on top of other tax cuts, such as Trump's proposal to exempt overtime pay. If you include that, it will be even more expensive.
Further complicating support for the bill is that Republicans plan to raise the debt ceiling through reconciliation, another sensitive issue for fiscal hawks.
Lawmakers on the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus said they would not support any bill unless the costs introduced were offset by spending cuts. Most Republicans support curbing federal spending, but agreeing on which federal programs to cut has always proven more difficult than expected. As a workaround, Republicans instead began looking for ways to change Washington's budget rules to make tax cuts cheaper.
The complexity of putting together a tax bill to secure the necessary votes has led some Republicans to hold off until the end of the year and push ahead with smaller bills focused on immigration, energy and military issues. I'm thinking. Republicans have not yet publicly outlined what the bill would look like.
Supporters of the strategy argue it would give Trump an early political victory on immigration and give the Republican campaign the top issue with the urgency it deserves.
Florida Rep. Byron Donald told reporters Tuesday that “our number one priority is to ensure the security of our borders.” “In my opinion, that’s the number one priority, everything else comes a close second.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the budget chairman who oversees the reconciliation process, has also pushed for a two-bill approach. “If you hold the Border Patrol hostage to get tax breaks, you're playing Russian roulette with national security,” he said.
Republicans are hoping Trump will step in and give the party a clear direction. He wrote on social media Sunday that Congress should pass “one strong bill,” an approach that has been supported by Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and others. Victory was clear. But Trump's vague statements since then have left Republicans unsure of which strategy to pursue.
Trump will meet with leading Republican senators on Wednesday and meet with House Republicans in Florida over the weekend to discuss the party's agenda.
In a sign of how politically complex the tax cut debate will become, one of the sessions is expected to focus on loosening the $10,000 limit on state and local tax deductions, known as SALT.
Republicans included a $10,000 cap in the 2017 tax law as a way to contain the bill's costs. But the move angered House Republicans from high-tax states like New York and New Jersey, many of whom voted against the entire 2017 tax bill as a result. Such defections are a luxury, and given the slim majority in the Republican leadership, they cannot afford it this year.
If Republican lawmakers in New York, New Jersey and California aren't satisfied with how the provision is handled, they could introduce tax bills. They are currently pushing to remove the cap as part of their party's tax bill. Eliminating the cap entirely could add about $1 trillion to the bill.
For presidents, coordinating ambitious policy agendas through Congress has often been a cumbersome and time-consuming process. Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act during Trump's first term have failed after more than six months of debate.
After the swift passage of pandemic relief in 2021 under President Biden, much of Democrats' broad agenda has been replaced by a second party-line bill that is much narrower than many in the party had hoped. was blocked for almost two years before it was passed.
This time around, Republicans will not only be grappling with historically slim margins in the House of Representatives, but also with a president prone to sudden changes of heart.
“You can argue the merits of both strategies,” said Rep. Jody Arrington, R-Texas, who heads the House Budget Committee. “He has to tell us what he wants and what he needs.”
